1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a facsimile apparatus and, more particularly, to a facsimile apparatus for transmitting a digitally recorded image to a magnetic tape.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A requirement in a facsimile apparatus is a memory medium, which serves as an image memory, that is low in cost, compact and large in capacity. In recently developed facsimile apparatus, colorization, in addition to advances in optical reading techniques and digital image processing techniques, has lead to a great increase in the volume of information in the image data handled. Meanwhile, efforts have been made to lower bit cost by enlarging the capacities of semiconductor memories, floppy disks and hard disks and, on the memory supply side, to enlarge the capacity, lower the cost and reduce the size of memory media.
However, semiconductor memories have a higher bit cost than hard disks and floppy disks, the non-volatility of data is difficult to achieve and power consumption cannot be ignored. For this reason, semiconductor memories are used for temporary storage of image data.
Floppy disks have a large capacity on the order of 10 to 20 M-bytes. However, when these disks are used in a facsimile apparatus, in which the volume of one page of image data is 2-4 M-bytes, the number of pages capable of being stored is limited.
Hard disks, on the other hand, have a large capacity of 40-500 M-bytes and are widely employed in recent facsimile apparatus. However, since large-capacity hard disks require a large and costly operating mechanism, the use of these disks in facsimile apparatus increases the size and raises the cost of the facsimile apparatus itself. Furthermore, if the hard disk is accommodated within the facsimile apparatus, maintenance for installing and extracting the disk is time-consuming. Furthermore, in terms of effectiveness as a memory medium, data convertibility and portability are problems. In order to solve these problems, a facsimile apparatus that employs both a hard disk and a floppy disk is available, but the cost thereof is high.